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Quote of the day—World of NewsNinja2012

At the end of 2010, there was an estimated 17.5 trillion dollars in United States retirement assets, including 3.1 trillion in 401k’s and 4.7 trillion in IRA’s. The idea that those who thrive on money and power would permit such an alluring trove to go untapped is laughable.

I think the “Full steam ahead…” title is an exaggeration but I do think long term there is a significant threat that politicians will claim IRA’s and 401k’s will “have” to be confiscated “for the good of the country”, “social justice”, or some other buzz phrase. “Complications” will ensue when they find very few buyers for the confiscated stocks, bonds, and precious metals. In the following political seasons similar justification probably will be given to private ownership of homes, land, and other private property. If the “complications” don’t reach “interesting” levels after the confiscations of the retirement funds they will when they start confiscating homes.

The “fiscal cliff” of next week is little more than a road turtle compared to the Grand Canyon at the end of the unfinished bridge our financial train is headed for at full speed and full power.

2 thoughts on “Quote of the day—World of NewsNinja2012”

Quite a bit of that $US17.5T consists in various Government pension systems, etc, but everywhere I turn, I see that lots of folks on the Right say it’s okay to seize those, but not okay to seize “private” funds.

Seems to THIS curmudgeon, conservative except for this item, that if it’s wrong to seize retirement funds, which are, after all, simply delayed compensation, it’s wrong to seize them from anyone who accrued them, either in private or public employment.

If there is a “contract” between X Company’s personnel to save some of their compensation in a pension, why does that same concept of “contract” not exist for public employees, whose pensions are under attack from those on this side of the aisle all the time?

The only case one can make for this schism fails both the sniff test and any legal test of what is a contract and what isn’t. For example, why does the Pension Guarantee Trust insure private pensions but not public ones? Why does the Feddle Gummint investigate pension management abuse in private systems but not in public pension systems?

Hmmm…. I can see how I was misunderstood. I’ll rewrite it a bit for clarity.

I did not intent to say that any of the pension funds should be confiscated. I was just trying to say there is a strong possibility they will be.

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